Food Banks

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point.

The circumstances in which people have to seek assistance to feed themselves and their families are not usually simple. They often involve a combination of issues, which manifest themselves in a great deal of pain and pressure for those involved. For example, I have constituents who are cancer patients who are forced to use food banks as a result of various combinations of Government policies. I wish I could say that those were isolated cases, but they are not. I wish I could say the situation was improving, but it is not. There are no signs of things getting better.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

In the past year and a half, more than 100,000 kg of food has been distributed in the small city of Stoke-on-Trent alone. My hon. Friend talks about the people who go to food banks. Has he seen, as I have, people who are absolutely on their last legs because they are so desperate? Many people who go to food banks are also embarrassed that they need such help.

[Mr Reed]

I have indeed seen that, and it suggests that we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the numbers of people who need the services of the food banks. Compared with last year, about 600 more people in my constituency are now using food banks to ensure that they can eat. That brings the total to 1,778, including almost 700 children. That is truly shocking, and it is the policies of the parties opposite that have led to this huge growth in the number of people needing help.

It is no coincidence that the wards in my constituency with the highest rise in the number of children being fed through food banks correlate with the wards with the highest rates of child poverty. For example, 41% of the children in the ward of Sandwith are now living in child poverty, and 234 of them rely on the generosity of those who donate to food banks. In Mirehouse, a third of the children are in poverty and more than 200 of them rely on food banks. Child poverty and the use of food banks are inextricably linked, yet the Government have no credible plan to tackle either.

We have repeatedly warned the Government that the legacy of their policies would be felt most keenly by the most vulnerable in our society. The very poorest are bearing the brunt of the cost of living pressures that the Government’s various regressive policies have created, and the consequences are there for all to see. There is a hidden country that is unseen by the Government and dismissed by the Prime Minister, and it shames them both. The working poor are emerging as the Prime Minister’s legacy, as millions of people live in quiet crisis. The explosion in the number of food banks should haunt him, shame him and move him to act, but I doubt that it will.